The other day I was going to tell of marble shooting here in Kentucky, but got side tracked by Lyssa's good news. So without further delay...Sister Allodia and the marble shooter.

Many people know Kentucky for the Derby just recently ran, the basketball championships just recently won, and the bourbon, just recently drunk. Lesser known is that Kentucky IS the heart and soul of the entire marble shooting world. I know, it's a big boast, but where else do they hold the World Championship Marbles Tournament except here in the beautiful Bluegrass State.

And guys start young, and perfect this fine art till they're stooped with age, and large of thumb.

This story doesn't involve any World Champion marble shooter though. It features Sister Allodia, my home room teacher for second grade, and a young juvenile delinquent named Doug Johnson.

Doug and I were in the same home room at St. Rita's parochial school, and I knew him in passing. During recess, we would play kickball, duck duck goose, and generally horseplay, but we also played marbles. Me not so much, because I wasn't very good but Doug was the class champ.

One day in December during recess, Doug called everyone together to show off his new shooters. They were shiny steel, and twice the size of any marble we had ever seen. All us boys oohed and aahed over, and I know how it's going to sound, Doug’s big balls. It turned out that Doug’s father worked for the railroad, and his new shooters wee really ball bearings from a train wheel.

So my crowd ran off to play hide and seek, and Doug and his crowd commenced to shooting marbles. With his new advantage, Doug cleaned up, and played, and played, and played, till Sister Allodia rang the bell for everyone to come back inside.

Doug grabbed his new loot, and stuffed them into his pocket, and came inside with the rest of us. Being that type of child, he took his seat in the back of the room, in the corner, and importantly, by the radiator.

This was important because Doug’s marvelous steel balls were powerful cold in his pocket. The smaller marble marbles warmed right up but not his steel beauties. So while the Sister wasn't watching, he pulled them out, and set them on the radiator. To warm them up.

The good sister(and all the nuns had to be saints to not kill us hillbillies), decide to give us a test on the Walls of Jericho story, so she passed out the Xerox (remember the smell?) copies the her questions to the students seated in the front rows to pass back. After this was completed we were to silently fill in the blanks while the good sister cruised up and down the aisles like a stately ship, with white and black sails, her sharp nose breaking the surf of the noise a roomful of children will make. A hush would descend in her immediate area, with louder murmurings following in her passage.

This was normal. Except someone had toys, out in the open, on the radiator. This would not stand.

As soon as Sister Allodia had her back turned and cruising in the other direction, Doug, swift as a snake, and sneaky as a cat, grabbed his beauties, and shoved them deep into his pants pocket with nary a whisper of sound to betray him. With the extra sensory senses all children have, WE knew what had happened. Disaster averted.

For just seconds. Because those heavy, dense steel balls had sat on that radiator, sucking up every erg of energy steam heat can generate on a cold December day, in a schoolroom full of children.

And they were in Doug’s pocket. Nestled near his real family jewels, as much as a second grader can have them. I give Doug credit. Many a fool would have suffered in silence rather than break a nuns quiet. But not ol’ Doug. He jumped up, grabbed his balls through his pants, and let out a yell. ”OOOWWWW!!!” echoed through the halls of St. Rita. Sister Allodia whirled like a striking snake, and saw Doug, standing there, holding …something…through the cloth of his crotch.

To be honest, I don't know what I need a male forTogether, let's break the glass ceilingUnity seems to be working pretty darn wellShould disorder be renamedInspiring completely stupid idiotic peopleOnly to be swallowedAlong with the dead bodyIt's dangerous to carry a red flagHere in Madison, prickThat's how families do itVictory means the endOf a 92 year old Goober.